Gov. Rick Snyder Should Be Forced to Drink Nothing But Contaminated Flint Water for the Rest of His Life

January 22, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Chicago, Child Predators, Child Safety, Detroit Schools, Education, Flint, Michigan, Local Control, Philadelphia Schools, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Puerto Rico, Racism, Republican, Rick Snyder, School Funding, Schools, Teachers #blacklivesmatter, Contaminated Water, corporate, Cost Savings, Darnell Earley, Detroit, education, Flint, Michigan, Politics, public schools, racism, Rick Snyder, teachers, terrorism

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As I write this, I have a fresh glass of ice cold water sitting next to me.

It is so clear I can see the wood grain of the the table through it. When I put it to my mouth, my lips almost go numb from the cold.

I gulp down way more than I should. In moments, it seems, the glass is empty.

Nothing satisfies like a crisp simple glass of water.

But in Flint, Michigan, that straightforward, easy pleasure can kill you.

And-or poison your children, cause learning disabilities, hearing loss, vomiting, high blood pressure, pain or numbness in the extremities, infertility or miscarriage. Among a host of other equally terrible maladies.

From the water.

Nine months ago the state officials who took over running Flint because the city was just too darn poor for self government, they shut off the flow of already treated Lake Huron water from Detroit. They replaced it with untreated raw water from the Flint River. The plan was to save money by treating this water, themselves, from a source that had been continually polluted for decades by the disappearing auto industry.

However, this noxious brew corroded the pipes, stripped out the lead and put it right into the water glasses Flint parents were using to hydrate their children.

More than 8,500 children. With high amounts of lead in their blood. Suffering untold injuries. For life.

Oh and the overwhelming majority of them are African American and/or impoverished. Whoops!

Gov. Rick Snyder has been defensively apologizing for this disaster. He knew all about it long before the taps were shut off. He even released a slew of inter-office emails about the situation where officials play pass-the-buck as Flint residents gulp down this filth from their faucets. As citizens complained about the water’s color and odor. As physicians protested it wasn’t safe for human consumption.

Even now Snyder STILL says people can safely bathe their children in this dirty, smelly, poisoned water. Just make sure the kiddos don’t drink it. In fact, he says he wouldn’t mind bathing his own grandchildren in this mess.

Yeah. Kinda takes away any sincerity from his “apology” and his statement that he’s responsible, doesn’t it?

Why isn’t this man in jail? Why is he still in the Governor’s mansion?

If we lived in a just country, this poor excuse for a human being would AT VERY LEAST be locked away in a dungeon somewhere never to sting our eyes at the sight of his repulsive face. A more appropriate punishment would be making him drink nothing but his own contaminated Flint tap water for the rest of his life as he suffers from the effects of lead poisoning – like all those thousands of children he helped poison to save a few bucks.

But no. In the America where we live, his only mistake was getting caught. And now he’s losing political points having to apologize without really doing much. Yeah, he’s called in the National Guard to help deliver bottled water. Yeah, he’s turned back on the Lake Huron water, but Flint’s pipes are already ruined so lead is still leaking into the water. Why are these poor people still being charged with a water bill for something they can’t use? No one except for Grandpa Rick Snyder would use this foul stuff for anything!

Meanwhile, Darnell Earley, the emergency manager appointed by Snyder who actually switched Flint’s water in the first place is at a new government job. He’s emergency manager of another Michigan public service – Detroit Public Schools! Dilapidated buildings, fungus growing on the walls, slime leaking from the ceiling, broken toilets – a state-provided learning environment overseen by this functionary who’s doing a heckuva job! Teachers trying to raise awareness of the situation have staged a series of “sickouts.” But Snyder’s administration still doesn’t have any money to waste on Detroit school kids – just like it didn’t have any money to provide potable water to Flint residents.

And the cycle continues. Crap gets flushed from one source to another – and I’m not talking about the Flint water system!

You can try to make justifications and excuses, but the lie gets awfully thin in Michigan. And if you think this is the only place where business trumps public welfare, you must be drinking from Snyder’s water cooler. Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, the entire island of Puerto Rico! Terrorists with government jobs are slowly dismantling our metropolitan areas, our public goods, everything that made America great!

And what the heck is being done about it? A lot of news stories, talking heads shaking their noggins and pointing their fingers everywhere except where the blame really lies.

It’s enough to drive one to drink.

Speaking of which, excuse me while I take another swig from my water glass.

Ah!

No, I don’t live in Flint. But this sure isn’t tap water. Are you kidding me?

In Pennsylvania we’ve had too many scares with Giardiasis and other bacteria in our municipal water occasionally making us sick.

I pay extra to bring this water to the house in huge jugs and put it on a machine that keeps it ice cold and refreshing anytime of the day or night.

Some people can’t afford it.

What are they to do?

Can anyone really feel safe drinking from the tap ever again?

What kind of a world is it where we can’t even trust the water?

What kind of world are we leaving for our children?

We are all a few months from becoming Flint.

It could already be happening.

Will we let it?

High Stakes Testing Doesn’t Protect Civil Rights – It Violates Them

January 17, 2016February 11, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Bill Gates, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, school closings, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Toxic Testing #blacklivesmatter, annual testing, charter schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education Reform, Dr. Martin Luther King, education, education reform, I Have a Dream, Politics, public schools, racism, standardized testing

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“Daddy, I know who that is!”

“Who is it?”

“That’s Martin Luther King.”

“That’s right, Baby! Who was he?”

“We saw a movie about him today in school. He had a dream.”

Thus began a fascinating conversation I had with my seven-year-old daughter a few days ago.

I had been going through her book bag and found a picture of Dr. King blazoned above an article about his life.

“He wanted everyone to be nice to each other,” she said.

I laughed. My first grade scholar isn’t that far off.

“He’s one of my heroes,” I said. “He means a lot to me.”

“That’s silly,” she said. “He doesn’t have any super powers.”

Before I could reply, her attention shifted to her stuffed Yoshi doll. She began to play.

One of the best things about being a parent is getting to see the world anew through the eyes of your children. My little girl offers me this vantage point everyday.

Dr. King can’t be a hero. He had no super powers.

Or did he?

“I have a dream,” he famously said, “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

It’s a simple wish. A simple insight.

Or is it?

Do we do that today? Do our schools?

As a middle school teacher, I’m well aware how our public schools judge our children, and it’s not by the content of their character. It’s by their standardized test scores.

High scores mean you’re learning. Low scores mean you’re not. And if you’re not learning, that’s your teachers fault and we’re going to close your school or turn it into a charter.

What’s worse, we’re going to do it because that ensures your civil rights.

That’s the story anyway.

Ever since rewriting the federal law governing K-12 schools began to be debated in earnest by Congress, the tale was told that high stakes testing is good for minorities. It makes sure schools aren’t neglecting them.

And now that the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has been passed, well-meaning people everywhere are wondering if we’re looking out for our black and brown brothers and sister enough – do we have enough federally mandated high stakes tests? Is there enough accountability?

After all, the new law potentially returns much of the power for education policy to the states. What if states don’t give as many tests? How will state legislatures ensure black students aren’t being neglected? Why would schools actually teach black kids if we don’t threaten to close them based on test scores?

These would be laughable questions if they weren’t asked in earnest. With such frequency. Even from some civil rights organizations.

Some things to consider:

1) The ESSA does absolutely nothing to limit standardized testing.

When Congress was rewriting federal education policy, parents, educators, students and experts of every stripe asked for a reduction in testing. It didn’t happen. Exactly the same number of tests are required under the ESSA as there were before it was passed – once a year in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

2) Punishing schools doesn’t help kids learn.

Once upon a time, it was the government’s job to provide schools with adequate resources to help kids master their lessons. Now it has become the government’s job to raise an arbitrary standard and shutter or privatize schools that fall below that mark.

This may come as a surprise, but no school has ever been improved by being closed. Students who are forced to relocate don’t suddenly do better. In fact, they usually do worse academically. Moreover, there is exactly zero evidence that charter schools do better than traditional public schools. In fact, the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction.

3) Standardized tests are poor assessments to judge learning.

Standardized testing has never been shown to adequately gauge what students know, especially if the skills being assessed are complex. The only correlation that has been demonstrated consistently is between high test scores and parental wealth. In general, rich kids score well on standardized tests. Poor kids do not.

Therefore, it is absurd to demand high stakes standardized testing as a means of ensuring students’ civil rights.

Judging kids based on these sorts of assessments is not the utopia of which Dr. King dreamed. We are not judging them by the content of their character. We’re judging them by the contents of their parents bank accounts.

There are real things we could be doing to realize racial and economic equality. We could do something about crippling generational poverty that grips more than half of public school students throughout the country. We could be taking steps to stop the worsening segregation of our schools that allows the effects of test-based accountability to disproportionately strike schools serving mostly students of color. We could invest in our neediest children (many of whom are minorities) to provide nutrition, tutoring, counseling, wrap around services, smaller class sizes, and a diverse curriculum including arts and humanities.

But we’re not doing any of that.

Why?

Because we’re too concerned about continuing the policies of test and punish. We’re too concerned about making sure huge corporations continue to profit off creating, grading and providing materials to prepare for annual standardized testing.

Dr. King may not have had super powers. But from his vantage point almost 50 years in the past, he saw through the lies of today’s education reform movement.

Standardized testing doesn’t protect civil rights. It violates them.

Our school policies for the past few decades have been about denying the right to an equitable education to our poor and minority students. Though the ESSA holds promise to limit federal meddling, it does nothing to change that. And all these people who cry foul at a potential loss of federal power are either ignorant or crying crocodile tears.

It’s no wonder that hundreds of civil rights organizations oppose high stakes testing. Nor is it surprising that the media rarely reports it. And it shouldn’t be a shock to learn that the overwhelming majority of civil rights organizations who have suddenly began championing testing are those who get big donations from the philanthro-capitalists pushing this agenda.

High stakes testing is a racist and classist policy. Period.

NOTE: This article was given a shout out on Diane Ravitch’s blog and published in the Badass Teachers blog.

Bernie Sanders is Right: We Should Federalize Public School Funding

January 13, 2016 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, NCLB, No Child Left Behind, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, President, privatization, Race to the Top, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, standards, Teach for America, Teachers, Toxic Testing, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM, voting #FeelTheBern, Bernie Sanders, Budget, charter schools, common core, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, public schools, school funding, standardized testing, teachers

Bernie Sanders just dropped a massive dose of truth on us Monday night.

No politician in my lifetime has ever said anything so dangerous, fraught with problems, unlikely, impractical, and absolutely on the nose right!

The Presidential candidate running for the Democratic nomination wants to make the federal government largely responsible for funding public schools. Right now districts are supported mostly by local and state taxes.

This is what he said:

“One of the things that I have always believed is that, in terms of education, we have to break our dependency on the property tax, because what happens is the wealthiest suburbs can in fact have great schools but poor, inner-city schools cannot. So I think we need equality in terms of how we fund education, and to make sure the federal government plays an active role to make sure that those schools who need it the most get the funds that they deserve.”

(Find the quote above 17 minutes into this video.)

Wow! What a statement!

Don’t tell me that was focused grouped. Don’t tell me his campaign did a poll first. Don’t tell me he ran that by any big donors for approval.

Whether you agree with it or not, such an audacious remark has to come from a genuine belief. This is really what Bernie thinks, and it’s entirely consistent with the Democratic Socialism of his whole political career.

I don’t think his rival for the party’s nomination, Hillary Clinton, will be parroting THIS stance! If anything, she might criticize him for it. And she’d have a multitude of practical reasons to do so.

Lots of folks on both sides of the aisle are sick of federal intervention in our schools. No Child Left Behind was a disaster. Race to the Top was worse. And the just passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) amounts to a massive giveback of power to the states. Under the most popular interpretation, the reauthorization of the federal law governing K-12 schools makes the states responsible for filling in the details of education policy while limiting federal interventions.

And now Bernie is suggesting the Fed foot the bill!?

That is going against the political tide. Who would vote for such a thing? Probably not Hillary. Or any of the Republican candidates. Or more than a handful in Congress, either.

But it’s exactly the right thing to do.

The reason?

The biggest problem with America’s public school system isn’t test scores, lazy students, or teachers unions. It’s poverty, segregation and inequitable funding.

We have separate schools for the rich and separate schools for the poor. We have schools serving mostly black and brown populations and schools serving mostly whites. And the way we allocate money and resources to these schools both allows and perpetuates this system.

Nationwide, state and local governments spend 15 percent less per pupil on poor school districts. I see this first hand. My home state of Pennsylvania is the worst offender, providing the poorest districts an embarrassing 33.5 percent less per student. This means higher class sizes, less teachers, less arts and humanities, less electives, less nurses, guidance councilors and wrap around services. This is the reality in 23 states.

An additional 23 states do buck this trend with more progressive funding formulas. States like California and Florida actually provide MORE spending to poor districts. This helps heal the wounds of malnutrition, violence, family instability and a host of other problems that go hand-in-hand with generational poverty. It also offset the costs of greater numbers of special education students and English Language Learners you typically find in these districts.

You might say, then, that the states where poor children get shafted could simply follow the lead of their more enlightened neighbors. Good luck with that! Rich folks rarely volunteer to subsidize the poor. They got theirs, and they vote and donate more regularly to local politicians than their indigent brethren can afford to do.

The result is a funding system based on local wealth. Rich areas have Cadillac education systems. Poor areas have dilapidated ones. That’s demonstrably unfair and leads to worse academic outcomes for needy kids.

What’s worse, no one else runs their schools this way. The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world – if not probably the ONLY country – that funds schools based largely on local taxes. Other developed nations either equalize funding or provide extra money for kids in need. In the Netherlands, for example, national funding is provided to all schools based on the number of pupils enrolled. But for every guilder allocated to a middle-class Dutch child, 1.25 guilders are allocated for a lower-class child and 1.9 guilders for a minority child – exactly the opposite of the situation in the U.S.

Federalizing education funding could solve all these problems. It could set the groundwork for an even playing field. All students could get a fair start in life! That’s a goal worth shooting for! And that’s what Bernie is suggesting.

But it’s an incredibly dangerous proposal.

Our school system still suffers nationwide from the effects of corporate education reform. National policy has been and continues to be one of high stakes standardized testing, poorly conceived and untested academic standards, and a push to privatize struggling schools. Corporatists call this “Accountability.”

It goes something like this: raise your test scores or we’re closing your school and turning it into a for-profit charter. Adopt these academic standards written by the testing companies and we’ll give you a couple extra bucks. De-professionalize teachers with junk science evaluations and hiring under-trained Teach for America temps or else we’ll cut your funding.

THIS is the federal legacy in education, and Bernie is suggesting we give them MORE POWER!?

Yes, and no. I can’t speak for Bernie, but that’s certainly not how this has to go. We can increase the Fed’s responsibility for funding schools without increasing its power over education policy. In my view, education decisions should be made locally, and I don’t mean at the state legislature. Decisions about how best to run schools should be made at the district level by the experts – the teachers and parents.

Certainly there will be those who call for more federal power over policy as a condition of federalized funding. But that has to be a deal breaker. Equitable funding with inequitable policy would just be plugging one hole while making another.

In my view, equitable funding IS the role of the federal government in public education. When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was first passed in 1965, it’s purpose was to make sure all schools were getting adequate resources. Under Bush and Obama, that became perverted to mean more standardized tests and philanthro-capitalist interventions. Bernie’s suggestion could be a step in returning to the original intent of the law.

Yes, the Fed should be engaged in accountability. It should make sure it’s funding schools properly. Maybe it should even be responsible to make sure those funds are being spent on things that broadly can be construed as education. I don’t mean that the fed should be able to withhold monies from districts with low test scores. But maybe it can prosecute administrators who use funding to lavishly redecorate their offices or who neglect the needs of students in their districts.

However, even if you agree – as I do – that this is a lofty goal, it is almost impossible to achieve. It’s like single-payer healthcare was in the ‘80s and ‘90s. This is what most of the world is doing but it was completely out of reach here politically. In fact, we still don’t have it, but look at how the landscape has changed. Obamacare is not-single payer, but it is a step in that direction. Bernie is even championing going that extra step and providing a medicare like system for all.

What seemed impossible decades ago, now seems within reach. The same may be true one day with federalized education funding.

To be honest, I doubt fixing our school funding system is high on Bernie’s list of things to do. Breaking up the big banks, overturning Citizens United, free college tuition, even healthcare probably come first. And maybe that’s not a bad thing. If any or all of these goals were realized, it would help the more than half of our public school children living in poverty. Moreover, just having equitable funding on the list with these other worthy goals puts it on the national agenda.

Right now, no one else is talking about this. It isn’t even a recognizable goal for most progressives. Frankly, I doubt many people have even thought about it. By bringing this up, Bernie is forcing us to do so.

When I first became an education activist, I thought I was doing it for my students. Then we had a daughter, and I thought I was doing it for her, too. But as the years have gone by, the landscape has changed only slightly. We’re still reaching a level of critical mass when the culture demands a major shift. We’re not there yet. So now I wonder if the people I’m really doing this for are my grandchildren.

One day we may have the courage to change the course of our education system. We may gain the nerve to actually accomplish our convictions. We might actually try to have a nation with liberty and justice for all.

That’s what I’m fighting to achieve. I think many of us are doing the same. But do we have the bravery to take Bernie at his word, to push this topic onto the national stage?

A Bernie Sanders presidency would do that. It might not achieve this lofty goal. Not now. The political winds aren’t favorable. But we can try, knowing full well the dangers and the improbability.

I wish Bernie would flesh out the details of his plan. I wish he’d exorcise the devil from the details. But the very fact that he has the intrepidity to offer this as a solution fills me with hope.

Is it hot in here or am I starting to Feel the Bern?

My Daughter is Not a Widget

January 6, 2016January 15, 2016 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Close Reading, Common Core, Compassion, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Junk science, PA Core, Pennsylvania, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teach for America, Teachers Big Business, charter schools, common core, Corbett, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, dehumanization, education, education reform, ExxonMobil, Politics, public schools, Rex Tillerson, standardized testing, teachers

“I’m not sure public schools understand that we’re their customer—that we, the business community, are your customer. What they don’t understand is they are producing a product at the end of that high school graduation. Now is that product in a form that we, the customer, can use it? Or is it defective, and we’re not interested? American schools have got to step up the performance level—or they’re basically turning out defective products that have no future. Unfortunately, the defective products are human beings. So it’s really serious. It’s tragic. But that’s where we find ourselves today.”
–Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil CEO

My daughter just turned seven during this holiday season.

She loves to draw. She’ll take over the dinning room table and call it her office. Over the course of a single hour, she can render a complete story with full color images supporting a handwritten plot.

These narratives usually star super heroes, cartoon characters and sometimes her mommy and daddy. In these flights of fantasy, I’ve traveled to worlds lit by distant suns, been a contestant on a Food Network cooking show, and even been a karate pupil to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle sensei.

That little girl is my pride and joy. I love her more than anything else in this world.

Make no mistake – She is not anyone’s product.

She is not a cog to fit into your machine. She is not merchandise, a commodity, a widget for you to judge valuable or not. She is not some THING for you to import or export. She is not a device, a gadget, a doodad, a doohickey or a dingus. She is not an implement, a utensil, a tool, or an artifact.

Her value is not extrinsic. It is intrinsic.

She is a person with a head full of ideas, a heart full of creativity and passion. She has likes and dislikes. She loves, she lives, she dreams.

And somehow Tillerson, this engineer turned CEO, thinks she’s nothing more than a commercial resource to be consumed by Big Business. He thinks her entire worth as a human being can be reduced to her market value. It doesn’t matter what she desires for herself. It only matters if she fills a very narrow need set by corporate America.

But what else should we expect from the man in charge of ExxonMobil? The corporation has a history of scandal, corruption and malfeasance going back decades.

Since the 1980s the company has been suppressing its own incredibly accurate data on climate change because that science would adversely affect the bottom line of a business that earns its money burning fossil fuels. Moreover, the company funds climate change denial groups. A study by the US Union of Concerned Scientists reports that ExxonMobil funded 29 climate change denial groups in 2004 alone. Since 1990, the report says, the company has spent more than $19 million funding groups that promote their views through publications and Web sites that are not peer reviewed by the scientific community. Need we even mention the corporation’s long history with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)?

Tillerson and Exxon have also been major boosters of the fracking industry pushing for deregulation as health concerns mount. Most recently, the organization was ordered to pay a $100,000 Environmental Protection Agency civil penalty for an illegal discharge of fluids from a Marcellus Shale natural gas well site in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.

It’s all about profit at Exxon. The corporation’s cost cutting measures also resulted in the largest oil spill in US waters to date. Environmental impacts are still being felt in Alaska’s Prince William Sound from the 11 million gallons of oil the Exxon Valdez supertanker unintentionally poured into the ocean, coasts and forests in 1989. Subsequent spills have occurred in Brooklyn (2007), the Yellowstone River (2011), Baton Rouge (2012), and Arkansas (2013). But why should that matter? The corporation was listed as the second most profitable in the world on the Fortune 500 in 2014.

Yet Tillerson is somehow worried about American workers being up to snuff? Why? The corporation outsources a steadily increasing share of its jobs overseas. Those that it does keep in the continental US have been subject to massive downsizing efforts. As employees have decreased, corporate profits have increased. And Tillerson expects anyone to think he’s concerned about the well-being of the American worker!? Give me a break!

I suppose it’s not that surprising though that someone who makes $40 million a year, himself, would expect a paycheck to be the ultimate display of personal significance. After all, he probably thinks his exorbitant salary proves that he’s very important.

Albert Einstein never made that kind of money. Heck! Neither did William Shakespeare, Dr. Martin Luther King, Marie Curie, or Abraham Lincoln. So by Tillerson’s ethos, all of these people were defective products unfit for the corporate world. Or at the very least our estimation of them is flawed.

After all, what need have we of Shakespeare’s poetry in the exercise of buying and selling? Perhaps the greatest author ever to write in the English language might find merit in the advertising department. Likewise, Dr. King’s ethic of equality might be useful in human resources. Marie Curie? She’d find gainful employment in research and development but any patents she generated would undoubtedly be held in the corporate interest. And Mr. Lincoln? Perhaps he could be useful as a low level administrator but, no, such iconoclasm as he possessed would probably not be a good fit. He’d end up freeing the wage slaves or other such unprofitable nonsense.

Is this really the American Dream? Find an occupation producing monetary wealth or else lose all claims to value? If so, how loud must history be laughing at us?

The post-Impressionist artist Van Gogh created 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. Many of these works now adorn museums around the globe and have forever changed the way we see the world. But during his lifetime, he sold only one painting. So by Tillerman’s logic, he was a defective product, a failure.

This is the sickness of the profiteer – to be forever appraising worth but unable to see true value. It is the disease eating away at the soul of our country. It’s the same mindset that justifies anything in the name of short-term gain – credit default swaps, the housing bubble, charter schools and Common Core.

After all, Tillerson’s notorious quote above comes from an infamous article in Fortune magazine in which the CEO threatened the former governor of Pennsylvania that he’d pull ExxonMobil out of the state if the legislature didn’t adopt some form of Common Core. And so the state gave in to the whim of one man with no experience, knowledge or wisdom about how children learn. And students in more than 500 public school districts are thus constrained by this legal economic blackmail.

I am but a simple man. I don’t bring in a six-figure salary. I’m a teacher in that same public school system. I’m also the father of an elementary student. I am a man of no monetary means and thus little merit. But I say this: the Tillersons of this world are wrong. Our children are worth more than these tiny bean counter brains realize. The purpose of education is not to provide more resources for their pointless game of Monopoly.

My daughter has a life, and her education is a tool to enrich that life. It is her vehicle of understanding the world around her. It is a process to invigorate her sense of wonder. It is a method of understanding how things work and where she fits in the universe.

Yes, she will one day need to seek employment. But what she chooses as her occupation will be up to her. SHE will decide where she fits in, Mr. Tillerson, not you. SHE will decide what is valuable in her life. SHE will decide if she wants to spend her hours in the pursuit of profits or less tangible enterprises.

As such, she needs literature – not standardized tests. She needs mysteries to solve – not Common Core. She needs equitable resources – not charter schools. She needs teachers with advanced degrees and dedication to their jobs – not Teach for America temps.

Don’t you dare try to justify all that with some narrow economic view of monetary value. Some things have no price. My daughter is one of them.

NOTE: This article also was featured on Diane Ravitch’s blog, I did an interview about it on the Rick Smith Show, and was quoted in an article about the issue in the Washington Post.

Gadfly’s Choice – Top 5 Blogs (By Me) You May Have Missed from 2015

January 3, 2016 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Bill Gates, Budget, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Junk science, Media, memes, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, protest, Puerto Rico, school closings, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM #blacklivesmatter, #StandUpForPublicSchools, charter schools, Civil Rights, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Poverty, public schools, Puerto Rico, school funding, standardized testing, teachers

There are an awful lot of great blogs out there.

Especially if you’re into education. But many are telling the same story.

You don’t hear much about it in the mass media, yet our public schools are being systematically starved to death. They’re being set up to fail while the vultures of privatization and free enterprise drool over the corpse.

Phony philanthropists offer schools fake donations with more strings attached than Pinocchio and noses twice as long. To secure these financial “gifts,” schools are forced to pay out more than they receive for reforms that ultimately benefit the benefactor more than the beneficiary.

And even when these philanthro-capitalists are absent, our government is pretending to hold schools accountable by forcing them to enact these same unproven, disproven or counter-factual policies that actually make things worse. Then when these schemes fail, lawmakers use that as a justification to close schools and gift them to for-profit companies who squeeze every ounce of profit they can from what’s left while further cheating students out of resources.

It’s a scam, a heist, a racket – and you’re paying for it with your tax dollars.

But if you’ve been reading the plethora of excellent edu-blogs out there, you already know this.

Who writes about this public school shakedown? Often it’s the same teachers, parents, professors and bonafide education experts whom policymakers have excluded from the conversation.

As a public school teacher, myself, with more than a decade in the classroom, a masters degree and a national board certification, my empiricism and experience is not valued. So like many folks burdened with real-world knowledge, I write a blog.

In only a year and a half, I’ve had more than 487,000 hits and 9, 208 followers. In my last post I listed my 10 most popular articles from 2015.

Today I propose to continue a tradition I stole from fellow blogger Russ Walsh. I present not my most popular work, but 5 articles that deserve another look. Most of these didn’t receive massive public attention, but perhaps they should.

Please enjoy your humble gadfly’s choice.

5) Prejudice of Poverty: Why Americans Hate the Poor and Worship the Rich

Published: Nov. 18

Views: 5,005

Description: America is rife with myths about the poor – mainly that the impoverished deserve their poverty. If they just worked harder, they wouldn’t be poor. Moreover, it’s a scam. The rest of us pick up the slack while they lounge around at home living better than we do. These are pernicious lies told with the certainty of truths. This article is my attempt to dispel these myths with facts.

Fun Fact: In my experience, often people are afraid to say certain things because they don’t want to appear racist. However, no such fear exists about sounding prejudiced against the poor, because few realize such bigotry even exists. It does. Big time.

4) Stories about Puerto Rican Resistance to Corporate Education Reform

–Parents and Children Occupy Puerto Rican School Refusing to Let Corporate Vultures Raid Its Contents

(Aug. 22 – 1,551 hits)

–In Puerto Rico, Students Go On Strike to Stop Teacher Relocations

(Sept. 25 – 1,211 hits)

–Puerto Rico Teachers Plan One-Day Strike to Protest Corporate Education Reform

(Nov. 15 – 634 hits)

Published: Aug. – Nov.

Views: 3,396 TOTAL

Description: The US territory of Puerto Rico is besieged by vulture capitalists encouraging damaging rewrites to the tax code while buying and selling island debt. Meanwhile hundreds of American private equity moguls and entrepreneurs are using the Commonwealth as a tax haven. As a result, tax revenues to fund public goods like education are drying up and hundreds of schools are being closed. However, the citizenry is putting up one of the most aggressive and successful resistance campaigns against corporate education reform in this hemisphere.

Fun Fact: For a while, few people on the mainland were talking about this – certainly not in the media. That appears to be slowly changing. There is so much we can all learn from Puerto Rico. We need each other.

3) Education Does Not Cure Poverty – It Cures Ignorance

Published: Oct. 18

Views: 3,080

Description: One of the biggest lies told by our national education policymakers is that schools alone can cure poverty. We don’t need an anti-poverty campaign. We just need to ensure people get a good education. This is baloney. The purpose of learning has never been to gain wealth or even teach how to gain wealth. It is and always has been about eradicating ignorance.

Fun Fact: If more people knew this, there would be no more high stakes testing, Common Core, etc. Also I’m kind of partial to this article because of the image I made to go along with it. Campell Brown vs. Socrates!? That always makes me smile!

2) Do Americans “Throw Money” At Their Schools? A Fair Funding Primer

Published: July 9

Views: 1,372

Description: How many times have you heard someone complain about all the money we throw at our schools? It’s dismissive nonsense. We aren’t throwing anything. We INVEST in children. That money is not a waste. In fact, it is far from adequate for the job. This post is my attempt to explain the facts behind school funding. Please share.

Fun Fact: It is so nice to have all of this information in one place. I have tweeted, emailed, and posted this article to blowhards and ignoramuses more times than I can remember. Feel free to do the same.

1) We Shall Overcome… Our Lack of Standardized Tests!?

Published: July 19

Views: 628

Description: This is the newest myth being spread about standardized testing. Somehow high stakes assessments ensure that minorities civil rights don’t get violated!? It is exactly the opposite of the truth. Yet many of the more well-funded civil rights organizations suddenly began singing this tune over the summer. My article tries to explain why.

Fun Fact: Make no mistake. Many civil rights organizations still vehemently oppose high stakes testing. If we really want to stand up for our black and brown brothers and sisters, we need to stand with them and counter this AstroTurf narrative at every turn. Testing violates their rights, not protects them.

Who’s Your Favorite Gadfly? Top 10 Blog Posts (By Me) That Enlightened, Entertained and Enraged in 2015

December 31, 2015 stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, AFT, Arne Duncan, Badass Teachers Association, Bernie Sanders, Bill Gates, Black Names, Budget, Civil Rights, Common Core, Compassion, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Election, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, Labor, Media, NCLB, NEA, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Opt Out, Parents, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, President, privatization, Propaganda, Race to the Top, Racism, Refugees, Republican, Rick Smith, School Funding, school violence, Schools, Standardized Testing, Student Mobility, Teachers, Unions, Violence Against Children, voting, White Allies, White Fragility, White Privilege, Yohuru Williams #blacklivesmatter, #LetTeachersTeach, #StandUpForPublicSchools, annual testing, badass teachers association, Bernie Sanders, corporate, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, public schools, racism, standardized testing, teachers

“Pennsylvania educator and public school advocate Steven Singer is one of the most powerful voices in the nation when it comes to speaking out for students, parents, teachers and our public schools.”
–Jonathan Pelto, founder of the Education Bloggers Network

“Steven Singer wrote these five terrific posts last year. I didn’t see them when they appeared. Probably you didn’t either. You should.”
– Diane Ravitch, education historian

“Your name should be Sweet Steven Singer. You are a delight.”
–Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union

Hello. My name is Steven Singer, and I am a gadfly.

I make no apologies for that. It’s what I set out to do when I started this blog in July of 2014.

I told myself that people were too complacent. There was no curiosity. People were too darn sure about things – especially education policy and social issues.

They knew, for instance, that standardized testing was good for children. Why? Because Obama said so. And he’s such a nice man. It’s too bad all those mean Republicans keep making him do all this bad stuff.

They also knew racism was over. After all… Obama! Right? Black President, therefore, the hundreds of years of struggle – finished! Move along. Nothing to see here.

Yet all this “knowledge” went against everything I saw daily as a public school teacher.

Standardized tests are good for children? Tell that to more than half of public school kids now living below the poverty line who don’t have the same resources as middle class or wealthy kids yet are expected to magically ace their assessments. Tell that to the kids who get hives, get sick, or throw up on test day. Tell it to the black and brown students who for some unexplainable reason almost always score lower than their white peers.

Racism is over? Tell that to all my minority students who are afraid to walk home from school because they might get followed, jumped, beaten or killed… by the police! Tell it to their parents who can’t get a home loan and have to move from one rental property to another. Tell it to the advertising executives and marketing gurus who shower my kids with images of successful white people and only represent them as criminals, thugs, athletes or rappers.

So when I started this blog, I consciously set out to piss people off. But with a purpose. To quote the original historical gadfly, Socrates, my role is, “to sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth.” It seems well suited to a school teacher. After all, Socrates was accused of “corruption of the youth.”

It’s been quite a year. When I went to the Network for Public Education conference in Chicago last April, some folks actually seemed to know who I was. “Don’t you write that Gadfly blog?” was a common question.

When I met NEA President Lily Eskelsen Garcia and AFT President Randi Weingarten, they both said, “I read your blog.” And then they looked me up and down suspiciously as if they were thinking, “THIS is the guy who writes all that stuff!? THIS is the guy giving me such a hard time!?”

Of course, I am human, too. One can’t sting and bite every day. Sometimes the things I write are met with love and approbation. Some weeks even Lily and Randi like me. Sometimes.

Education historian Diane Ravitch has given me tremendous moral support. I can’t tell you how gratifying it is to have one of your heroes appreciate your work! Her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” really woke me up as a new teacher. I’m also on the steering committee of the Badass Teachers Association, an organization that has changed my life for the better. The more than 56,000 people there are my support. I would never have had the courage to start a blog or do half of the crazy things I do without their love and encouragement.

And there are so many more people I could thank: my fellow bloggers Jonathan Pelto, Peter Greene, Russ Walsh, Nancy Flanagan, Mitchell Robinson, and Yohuru Williams. Also the good people at the LA Progressive and Commondreams.org. The incredible and tireless radio host Rick Smith.

There are just too many to name. But no list of acknowledgment would be even close to completion without mentioning my most important supporter – you, my readers. Whether you’re one of the 9,190 people who get every new post delivered by email or if you otherwise contribute to the 486,000 hits my site has received so far, THANK YOU.

So in celebration of my first full year of blogging, I present to you an end of the year tradition – a Top 10 list. Out of the 90 posts I wrote in 2015, these are the ones that got the most attention. Often they incensed people into a fury. Sometimes they melted hearts. I just hope – whether you ended up agreeing with me or not – these posts made you think.

Feel free to share with family, friends, co-workers, etc. After all, I’m an equal opportunity gadfly. I always cherish the chance to buzz around a few new heads!

10) The Democrats May Have Just Aligned Themselves With Test and Punish – We Are Doomed

Published: July 17, 2015
Views: 7,122

Description: It hit me like a slap in the face that almost all Senate Democrats voted to make the reauthorization of the federal law governing K-12 public schools a direct continuation of the same failing policies of the Bush and Obama years. Heroes like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seemed to be turning their back on teachers, parents and school children. And they were stopped in their efforts by… Republicans!

Fun Fact: This story had some legs. It inspired a bunch of education advocates like myself who are also Bernie Sanders supporters to write the candidate an open letter asking him to explain his vote. His campaign eventually responded that it was about accountability!?

9) Punching Teachers in the Face – New Low in Presidential Politics

Published: Aug. 3
Views: 14,735

Description: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie thought he’d run for the Republican nomination for President. He thought threatening to metaphorically punch teachers unions in the face would get him votes. It didn’t.

Fun Fact: This new low in Presidential politics came just after Donald Trump had announced he was running. Christie’s new low now seems almost quaint after Trump’s calls to tag all Muslims and monitor their Mosques. How innocent we were back in… August.

8) This Article May Be Illegal – Lifting the Veil of Silence on Standardized Testing

Published: April 18
Views: 15,818

Description: Teachers and students may be legally restrained from telling you what’s on federally mandated standardized tests, but we’re not restrained from telling you THAT we’re restrained. Is this just protecting intellectual property or direct legal intimidation of educators and children?

Fun Fact: I have not yet been arrested for writing this piece.

7) Stories about Teachers Union Endorsements of Hillary Clinton

–Did the AFT Rank and File REALLY Endorse Hillary Clinton for President? If So, Release the Raw Data

(July 12 – 4,448 hits)

–The NEA May Be About to Endorse Hillary Clinton Without Input From Majority of Members

(Sept. 21 – 3,873 hits)

–A Handful of NEA Leaders Have Taken Another Step Toward Endorsing Hillary Clinton Despite Member Outcry

(Oct. 2 – 739 hits)

–Teachers Told They’re Endorsing Hillary Clinton by NEA Leadership, Member Opinions Unnecessary

(Oct. 4 – 7,074 hits)

Published: July 12 – Oct. 4
Views: 16,134 TOTAL

Description: You expect your union to have your back. Unfortunately it seems our teachers unions were more interested in telling us who we’d be endorsing than asking us who the organizations representing us should endorse.

Fun Fact: I broke this story pretty much nationwide. News organizations like Politico were calling me to find out the scoop.

6) Why We Should Have ZERO Standardized Tests in Public Schools

Published: Jan. 30
Views: 16,443

Description: Someone had to say it. We don’t need any standardized tests. We need teacher-created tests. And that’s not nearly as crazy as some people think.

Fun Fact: This was written back when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was being rewritten and naïve fools like me thought we might actually get a reduction in high stakes testing. Spoiler alert: we didn’t.

5) Atlanta Teacher RICO Conviction is Blood Sacrifice to the Testocracy

Published: April 3
Views: 18,187

Description: There is something terribly wrong when we’re using laws created to stop organized crime as a means to convict teachers cheating on standardized tests. I’m not saying cheating is right, but the mafia kills people. These were just teachers trying to keep their jobs in a system that rewards results and refuses to balance the scales, listen to research or the opinions of anyone not in the pockets of the testing and privatization industries.

Fun Fact: Watching all those seasons of “The Wire” finally came in handy.

4) Not My Daughter – One Dad’s Journey to Protect His Little Girl From Toxic Testing

Published: March 20
Views: 26,420

Description: How I went to my daughter’s school and demanded she not be subjected to high stakes testing in Kindergarten.

Fun Fact: They were very nice and did everything I asked. If you haven’t already, you should try it!

3) I Am Racist and (If You’re White) You Probably Are, Too

Published: June 2
Views: 28,906

Description: White folks often can’t see white privilege. This is my attempt to slap some sense into all of us. If you benefit from the system, you’re responsible to change it.

Fun Fact: Oh! The hate mail! I still get it almost every day! But I regret nothing! A black friend told me I was brave to write this. I disagreed. Anytime I want I can hide behind my complexion. She can’t.

2) I Am A Public School Teacher. Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got

Published: Nov. 19
Views: 45,196

Description: Our public schools are already places of refuge for our nation’s school children. Send me more. I’ll take them all. I’d rather they end up in my classroom than drowned by the side of a river.

Fun Fact: I got equal love and hate for this one. Some folks were afraid of terrorists. Others didn’t think we could afford it. But many told me my heart was in the right place. Lily and the folks at the NEA were especially supportive.

1) White People Need to Stop Snickering at Black Names

Published: Sept. 6
Views: 96,351

Description: Maybe we should stop laughing at black people’s names. Maybe we should try to understand why they are sometimes different.

Fun Fact: You’d have thought I threatened some people’s lives with this one! How dare I suggest people should stop mocking other people’s names! If you want to know how strong white fragility is in our country, read some of the comments! But many people thanked me for bringing up something that had bothered them for years but that they had been too polite to talk about, themselves. This is easily my most popular piece yet.

Does Bernie Sanders Offer Education Advocates Enough? Are We Feelin’ the Bern or Just Feelin’ Burned?

December 27, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Bernie Sanders, Common Core, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, ESEA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Hillary Clinton, NCLB, NEA, No Child Left Behind, Politics, President, privatization, school closings, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teachers, Unions, voting Bernie Sanders, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, Politics, public schools, school closings, standardized testing, teachers

You probably didn’t hear about this on the news.

To my knowledge no one covered it on TV, the newspaper or even on the blogosphere.

But Bernie Sanders may have made a reply to his Democratic Primary rival Hillary Clinton’s gaffe about closing public schools.

“I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job,” Clinton said at a campaign stop in Iowa on Dec. 22.

The media took this to mean Clinton is in favor of closing half the schools in the country. The comment has been much debated with calls for context and explanation by the Clinton campaign.

However, very quietly on Dec. 24, Sanders tweeted, “We should not be firing teachers. We should be hiring teachers. School teachers and educators are real American heroes.”

The @BernieSanders twitter account has more than 1 million followers, a little less than the @SenSanders account. But it does appear to be affiliated with the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. If Sanders, himself, posted the tweet is unclear. The candidate used the same account to live tweet the Republican debates so he – at least sometimes – is personally responsible for the material that comes out of there.

Moreover, the comment can be connected directly to something he said on C-SPAN at a campaign stop in Cleveland, OH, on Nov. 16 – before Clinton’s gaffe. In a larger speech that touched on numerous issues he said, “We should not be firing teachers and childcare workers, we should be hiring teachers.” The line about teachers being American heroes is new.

Start the speech 56 minutes in to hear the comment.

So I think it’s fair to say that the sentiment is, in fact, Bernie’s. It’s only the timing that is in question.

Is this tweet an attempt to distinguish himself from Clinton? Is this his way of saying that he’s NOT interested in closing schools and firing teachers – instead he wants to invest in education and hire more educators?

Maybe.

It sure would be nice if he’d come out and tell us. Frankly, I’m getting tired of having to read the tea leaves to get a glimpse of Bernie’s K-12 education policy.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the guy.

He’s been one of my favorite politicians for years. As a U.S. Senator, he’s consistently worked against economic and social inequality for decades. He’s been a fearless critic of Wall Street and privatization, an advocate for single payer healthcare and fighting global climate change.

He champions historic investments in preschool and college – even vowing to make post secondary tuition free. But somehow when it comes to K-12 schools, he’s got very little to say.

Most notably, he voted against No Child Left Behind (NCLB) – the devastating schools bill passed with bipartisan support during the George W. Bush years. However, he also voted in favor of the Charter School Expansion Act of 1998 which further opened the nation’s piggy bank to for-profit school privatizers. He also opposed a bill in early 2015 that would have prohibited the federal government from imposing the terrible Common Core standards on the nation’s schools.

On the campaign trail, when asked about his stance on K-12 schools, Sanders has boasted he would end NCLB. That was just accomplished by Congress through a reauthorization of the bill now called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As a member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Sanders was an active participant in that process.

When this legislation was still in the Senate, he – along with almost all Democrats – voted for a failed amendment that would have continued most of the worst aspects of NCLB. The bill eventually passed the chamber in a potentially more palatable form. Sanders eventually voted for that Senate version but was conspicuously absent from the final vote.

Though keeping a busy campaign schedule, Sanders is known for returning to Washington to vote for important legislation. He does this much more than most of the other sitting Congressional Presidential candidates.

So why was he absent for the final vote on the ESSA? Was that done on purpose, and if so why? Could it be an attempt to distance himself from this legislation? Or is it an attempt at plausible deniability – a way of justifying both his approval and disapproval of the same legislation?

Sanders hasn’t said much.

This puts would-be-supporters in an uncomfortable position. We like what Sanders has to say about the economy and poverty, but we have little to go on when it comes to K-12 education. Certainly if Sanders was elected President and came through with all of his other promises, that would help our public schools tremendously. And since Sanders has been fighting for these things his entire lengthy political career, it’s hard to doubt his sincerity. But why not include education as part of this platform? It seems to fit perfectly with everything else he believes.

On the other hand, there’s Clinton. She is making a real effort to clarify her education positions. In fact, last week’s gaffe was part of a much larger policy speech on K-12 schools. Sander’s reply – though better stated – was a one off. It was a sound-byte. It was an applause line. It didn’t have much substance behind it.

How are we to take it? Would Sanders hire more teachers as part of a nationwide education equity policy? If so, what exactly is that policy? Or is he – like Clinton – in favor of closing some struggling schools?

Certainly Clinton has a credibility problem. One of her first actions on the public scene as the First Lady of Arkansas in 1983 was to fight against the state teachers union to enact accountability-based school reform. Many of the billionaires and shady think tanks that are working so hard to destroy public schools have donated heavily to her campaign. Her endorsement by both major teachers unions – the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers – were allegedly the result of leadership and not rank and file members.

But unlike Sanders, Clinton actually seems to care about getting the education vote. She is actively fighting for our advocacy. Bernie doesn’t seem to think he needs us.

The Democratic Primaries are about two months away. If Sanders is going to make a play for teachers, parents, students and education advocates, he still has a chance. But time is running out.

Personally I’d rather vote for him, and maybe I will. But if he finally came out swinging, if he actually made me feel like he’d strip away the high stakes testing, unproven or failing policies and put teachers in the drivers seat – he could get so much more.

There are tens of thousands of teachers and advocates standing on the sidelines looking to Bernie. If he gave us a major policy speech, he’d find his campaign offices flooded with new volunteers. Educators would take to the streets and phone banks. We’d lead the charge. We could help turn the tide in a Democratic primary where the margin of victory could well be razor thin.

We’re out there, Bernie. Just say the word and we’ll come running.

We want to Feel the Bern, but you’ve got to turn up the heat!

NOTE: This article also was published in Commondreams.org and the LA Progressive.

I Doubt Hillary Clinton Plans to Close Half of All Public Schools – But She Does Want to Close Some

December 23, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, Bill Gates, Campbell Brown, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, Media, Politics, Poverty, President, privatization, Rahm, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, segregation, Teachers, Unions, voting charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, education, education reform, Election, Hillary Clinton, neoliberal, Politics, public schools, school closings, teachers

“This school district, and these schools throughout Iowa, are doing a better than average job. Now, I wouldn’t keep any school open that wasn’t doing a better than average job. If a school’s not doing a good job, then, you know, that may not be good for the kids.”
-Hillary Clinton

The above comments have caused a tremendous stir in the media lately.

Hillary Clinton wants to close half of all public schools!? She wants to shutter all public houses of learning that are average or below average!?

The Federalist even did some quick math and decided this means Clinton would shutter 50,000 schools. They even put that number in the headline of their article!

But hold your horses, media backlash.

I’m not really a Hillary supporter, but this has gotten a little out of hand.

Maybe I’m being too generous here, but I’m going to assume that Clinton may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.

She made a gaffe. She said something that doesn’t make much sense mathematically. Close all schools below average? Average means 50%. That’s half of all schools.

It was a blunder, a mistake, a foot-in-the-mouth moment.

I can believe a lot about Clinton, but not that her education policy includes shuttering half of our nation’s schools.

However, don’t take my word for it. Seriously! Ask her. She should clarify what she meant. But give her a chance to do so. Don’t mob her just looking to trip her up.

I doubt I’ll vote for Hillary in the primary, but she deserves a certain modicum of respect. She is an impressive person. She’s accomplished a heck of a lot in her life under some pretty intense circumstances.

As a college student in the 1960s, she volunteered to teach reading to children in poor Boston neighborhoods. She fought to ensure voting access for African Americans and even worked at an alternative newspaper in the black community. As First Lady and in Congress, she pushed for universal pre-kindergarten, arts education, after-school tutoring, smaller class sizes and the rights of families.

And in 2008 she ran an impressive – if ultimately unsuccessful – campaign for President.

As one of the most prominent women in the nation, she’s made some enemies.

Remember that Benghazi nonsense! Conservatives have been out for her blood because an American diplomatic compound in Libya was attacked in 2012 while Clinton was Secretary of State. They’ve trumped up a crazy amount of lies and innuendo that she was somehow responsible when it was the Republican-controlled Congress that voted to reduce security at these installations.

Heck! Michael Bay has a hatched job movie coming out during this election season just to wound Clinton’s current bid for president!

So give the woman some credit. She’s proven she’s a serious-minded, intelligent and capable politician.

However, like every human being she misspeaks from time-to-time. George W. Bush couldn’t open his mouth without English teachers and grammarians hiding under the sofa.

I think this explains much of what she said in Iowa trying to consolidate votes for the first Democratic primary on Feb. 1, 2016.

It explains much – but not all.

Clinton may have fudged her math momentarily forgetting that 50% of all schools are – and always will be – below average. If tomorrow every school in the country provided the greatest education the world has ever seen, half of them would still be below average. That’s what average means.

What bothers me is that Clinton thinks we should be closing schools at all.

That’s not a slip. That’s not a blunder or a miscalculation.

She really seems to believe you can improve public education by closing schools. And THAT is much more dangerous than any nonsense about her going on a nationwide school shuttering spree – something of which she would not, by the way, even have the power to do as President.

This idea that we can close schools to improve education is one of the founding principles of corporate education reform. And it’s demonstrably untrue.

Never has a school ever been improved by being closed. Student academic outcomes do not increase when children are displaced. In fact, they suffer.

If schools are struggling, a sensible strategy would be to find out what’s wrong. What is the reason kids are having trouble reaching academic success?

Spoiler Alert: nine times out of ten the problem is disinvestment. The school doesn’t have adequate resources to meet students’ needs.
More than half of our nation’s public school children live in poverty. Their schools don’t get equitable funding with districts that serve the rich. Moreover, privatization, charterization, increased efforts at vouchers, tax breaks and school choice have segregated our schools to such a degree that these problems disproportionately affect our students of color to a much larger degree than white children.

THAT is the problem with American education. It’s been proven time and again in study after study. Yet corporate education reformers like Michelle Rhee, Campbell Brown, Bill Gates, and Andrew Cuomo continue to ignore the facts in favor of simply closing more schools. In his time as Mayor, Rahm Emanuel has closed 50 Chicago schools – 46 of which serve mostly black and brown students. And he’s a close Clinton friend.

It is no accident that so many of these corporatists are Democrats. The entire neoliberal wing of the party is sick with these sorts of conservative policies. And Clinton can be connected with many of them.

Since getting the support of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA), Clinton’s tried to distance herself from her disaster capitalist buddies. But it isn’t working.

On the one hand, she criticized charter schools for ignoring the most difficult students. On the other, she still champions keeping privatized education in the mix.

On one hand, she thinks there should be a federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department for civil rights abuses. On the other hand, she thinks Rahm is doing a heck-of-a job.

I am deeply troubled that Clinton seems to think we can close our way to academic success. She should know better than that by now. Everyone should. It is absolutely unacceptable that any candidate with such teacher support should hold these views. Quite frankly, it’s a deal breaker.

The ball’s in your court, Hillary. You need to explain what you meant by your Iowa comments.

I admire Clinton’s bravery for actually talking about K-12 education – something her rival Bernie Sanders seems much less inclined to do. However, we all know Clinton’s endorsements by the AFT and NEA don’t represent the views of the rank-and-file. These were top down decisions made without much member input. If Hillary wants those endorsements to translate into votes, she’d better do some serious convincing.

Otherwise it won’t be schools that are shuttered. It will be her campaign.

NOTE: This article also was published on the Badass Teachers Association Blog and mentioned on Diane Ravitch’s blog.

Don’t Blame My Students For Society’s Ills

December 22, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Common Core, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Parents, Pennsylvania, Police, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, Schools, segregation, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM, Violence Against Children, White Privilege #blacklivesmatter, #StandUpForPublicSchools, blame, common core, Corporate Education Reform, education, Politics, public schools, racism, segregation, standardized testing, Students, Value Added Measures

poverty LOCAL POVERTY GEE

As a public school teacher, I see many things – a multiplicity of the untold and obscure.

On a daily basis, I see the effects of rampant poverty, ignorance and child abuse. I see prejudice, racism and classism. I see sexism, homophobia and religious intolerance.

And hardly any of it comes from my students.

Despite what some people might say in the media, on Facebook or at the local watering hole, the kids are all right. It’s what we, the adults, are doing to them that’s messed up.

It’s always been in fashion for grown-ups to trash the next generation. At least since Hesiod bemoaned the loss of the Golden Age, we’ve been looking at the current crop of youngsters waiting in the wings to replace us and found them lacking. They just don’t have our drive and motivation. In my day, we had to work harder than they do. If only they’d apply themselves more.

It’s all untrue. In fact, today’s children have it harder than children of the ‘70s and ‘80s did when we were their age! Much harder!

For one thing, we didn’t have high stakes standardized tests hanging over our heads like the Sword of Damocles to the degree these youngsters do. Sure we took standardized assessments but not nearly as many nor did any of them mean as much. In Pennsylvania, the legislature is threatening to withhold my students’ diplomas if they don’t pass all of their Keystone Exams. No one blackmailed me with anything like that when I was a middle schooler. All I had to do was pass my classes. I worried about getting a high score on the SAT to get into college, but it didn’t affect whether I got to graduate. Nowadays, kids could ace every course for all 13-years of grade school (counting Kindergarten) and still conceivably only earn a certificate of attendance! Try using that for anything!

Moreover, my teachers back in the day didn’t rely on me so they could continue being gainfully employed. The principal would evaluate them based on classroom observations from time-to-time to assess their effectiveness based on what he or she saw them doing. But if I was having a bad day during the assessment or if I just couldn’t grasp fractions or if I was feeling too depressed to concentrate – none of that would affect my teacher’s job rating. None of it would contribute to whether my teacher still had an income.

Think of how that changes the student-teacher relationship. Now kids as early as elementary school who love their teachers feel guilty on test day if they don’t understand how to answer some of the questions. Not only might their score and future academic success suffer, but their teacher might be hurt. That’s a lot of pressure for people who’ve just learned how to tie their shoes. They’re just kids! In many cases, the educator might be one of the only people they see all day who gives them a reassuring smile and listens to them. And now being unready to grasp high-level concepts that are being hurled at kids at increasingly younger ages may make them feel responsible for hurting the very people who have been there for them. It’s like putting a gun to a beloved adult’s head and saying, “Score well or your teacher gets it!” THAT’S not a good learning environment.

Finally, child poverty and segregation weren’t nearly as problematic as they are today. Sure when I went to school there were poor kids, but not nearly as many. Today more than half of all public school children live below the poverty line. Likewise, in my day public policy was to do away with segregation. Lawmakers were doing everything they could to make sure all my classes had increasing diversity. I met so many different kinds of people in my community school who I never would have known if I’d only talked with the kids on my street. But today our schools have reverted to the kind of separate but equal mentality that was supposed to be eradicated by Brown vs. Board of Education. Today we have schools for the rich and schools for the poor. We have schools for whites and schools for blacks. And the current obsession with charter schools and privatization has only exacerbated this situation. Efforts to increase school choice have merely resulted in more opportunities for white flight and fractured communities.

These are problems I didn’t face as a teenager. Yet so many adults describe this current generation as “entitled.” Entitled to what!? Less opportunity!? Entitled to paying more for college at higher interest for jobs that don’t exist!?

And don’t get me started on police shootings of young people. How anyone can blame an unarmed black kid for being shot or killed by law enforcement is beyond me.

Children today are different. Every few years their collective character changes. Today’s kids love digital devices. They love things fast-paced, multi-tasked and self-referential. But they don’t expect anything they haven’t earned. They aren’t violent criminals. As a whole they aren’t spoiled or unfeeling or bratty. They’re just kids.

In fact, if I look around at my classes of 8th graders, I see a great many bright, creative and hard-working young people. I’m not kidding.

I teach the regular academic track Language Arts classes. I don’t teach the advanced students. My courses are filled with kids in the special education program, kids from various racial, cultural and religious backgrounds. Most of them come from impoverished families. Some live in foster homes. Some have probation officers, councilors or psychologists.

They don’t always turn in their homework. Sometimes they’re too sleepy to make it through class. Some don’t attend regularly. But I can honestly say that most of them are trying their best. How can I ask for more?

The same goes for their parents. It can be quite a challenge to get mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, brother, sister or other guardians on the phone. Parent-teacher conferences are very lonely in my room while the advanced teacher is mobbed. But I don’t generally blame the parents. In my experience, most moms and dads are doing the best they can for their kids. Many of my student’s have fathers and mothers working multiple jobs and are out of the home for the majority of the day. Many of my kids watch over their younger brothers and sisters after school, cooking meals, cleaning house and even putting themselves to bed.

I wish it wasn’t like that, but these are the fruits of our economy. When the recession hit, it took most of the well-paying jobs. What we got back was predominantly minimum wage work. Moreover, people of color have always had difficulty getting meaningful employment because of our government sanctioned racial caste system. Getting a home loan, getting an education, getting a job – all of these are harder to achieve if your skin is black or brown – the same hue as most of my students and their families.

So, yes, I wish things were different, but, no, I don’t blame my students. They’re trying their best. It’s not their fault our society doesn’t care about them. It’s not their fault that our nation’s laws – including its education policy – create a system where the odds are stacked against them.

As their teacher, it’s not my job to denigrate them. I’m here to lift them up. I offer a helping hand, not a pejorative finger.

And since many of the factors that most deeply affect education come from outside the school, I think my duty goes beyond the confines of the classroom. If I am to really help my students, I must be more than just an educator – I must be a class warrior.

So I will fight to my last breath. I will speak out at every opportunity. Because my students are not to blame for society’s ills. They are the victims of it.

NOTE: This article also was published in Wait What?, and the Badass Teachers Association Blog.

Philly Schools Sacrificed on the Altar of Pennsylvania Budget Compromise

December 15, 2015December 30, 2015 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Corbett, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Gerrymandering, Local Control, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Schools, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Racism, Republican, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, Teachers, Tom Wolf #blacklivesmatter, Budget, Corbett, Corporate Education Reform, Democrats, education, education reform, Election, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Schools, Politics, public schools, racism, Republicans, teachers, Tom Wolf

agnusdei

Pennsylvania lawmakers are ready to help all students across the Commonwealth – if only they can abuse, mistreat and trample some of them.

Which ones? The poor black and brown kids. Of course!

That seems to be the lesson of a school code bill passed with bipartisan support by the state Senate Thursday.

The legislation would require the Commonwealth to pick as many as 5 “underperforming” Philadelphia schools a year to close, charterize or just fire the principal and half the staff. It would also allow non-medically trained personnel to take an on-line course before working in the district to treat diabetic school children. And it would – of course – open the floodgates to more charter schools!

It’s a dumb provision, full of unsubstantiated facts, faulty logic and corporate education reform kickbacks. But that’s only the half of it!

The bill is part of a budget framework agreed to by Governor Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled legislature necessary to finally pass a state-wide spending plan. The financial proposal has been held hostage for almost half a year!

The major sticking point has been school funding. Democrats like Wolf demand an increase. Republicans refuse. And the worst part is that the increase would only begin to heal the cuts the GOP made over the last four years.

Republicans just won’t clean up their own mess.

They slashed public school budgets by almost $1 billion per year for the last four years with disastrous consequences. Voters who could make little headway against a GOP legislature entrenched in office through gerrymandering rebelled by kicking the Republican Governor out of Harrisburg and voting in Wolf, a new chief executive who promised to support school children.

But for the last 5 months, the Republican-controlled legislature simply refused to spend money on – yuck – school children! Especially poor brown and black kids who rely more on state funding! Barf!

Finally a bargain was struck to put the money back, but only if it screws over more poor black and brown kids.

As usual, Philadelphia Schools is the state’s whipping boy.

For decades saddled with a host of social ills yet starved of resources, Philadelphia Schools simply couldn’t function on funding from an impoverished local tax base. The 8th largest school district in the country needed a financial investment from the state to make up the difference. However, in 2001 the Commonwealth decided it would only do this if it could assume control with a mostly unelected School Recovery Commission (SRC). Now after 14 years of failure, the state has decided annually to take a quintet of Philly schools away from the state and give them to – THE STATE! The State Department of Education, that is, which will have to enact one of the above terrible reforms to turn the schools around.

Yet each of these reforms is a bunch of baloney!

Hiring non-medical personnel with on-line training to treat diabetic kids!? Yes, two children died in Philly schools recently because budget cuts took away full-time school nurses. But this solution is an outrage! Try proposing it at a school for middle class or rich kids! Try proposing it for a school serving a mostly white population!

More charter schools!? Most new charter companies aren’t even interested in taking over Philly learning institutions. There’s no money in it! The carcass has been picked clean!

Privatizing public schools has never increased academic outcomes. Charter schools – at best – do no better than traditional public schools and – most often – do much worse.

Closing schools is a ridiculous idea, too. No school has ever been improved by being shut down. Students uprooted from their communities rarely see academic gains.

And firing staff because the legislature won’t provide resources is like kicking your car because you forgot to buy gas. You can’t get blood from a stone.

But this is what Republicans are demanding. And most of the Democrats are giving in. Every state Senator from Philadelphia voted for this plan – though reluctantly.

Is this really the only way to reach some kind of normalcy for the rest of the state? Do we really need to bleed Philadelphia some more before we can heal the self-inflicted wounds caused by our conservative legislators?

The bill includes a $100 million increase for Philadelphia Schools. But this is just healing budget cuts made to the district four years ago. Until Republicans took over the legislature, Philadelphia received this same sum from the state to help offset the vampire bite of charter schools on their shrinking budgets. Now – like all impoverished Pennsylvania schools – that charter school reimbursement is only a memory.

So this money only puts Philly back to where it was financially a handful of years ago when it was still struggling.

It’s a bad bargain for these students. Though some might argue it’s all we’ve got.

A sane government would increase funding to meet the needs of the students AND return the district to local control.

Republicans demand accountability for any increase in funding but how does this new bill do that exactly? Charter schools are not accountable to anyone but their shareholders. The School Recovery Commission has been failing for over a decade. Since most are political appointees, who are they accountable to really?

A duly elected school board would be accountable to residents. If voters didn’t like how they were leading the district, they could vote them out. THAT would be accountability. Not this sham blood sacrifice.

The state House is set to vote on this bill soon and will probably pass it, too. Maybe that’s just as well. Maybe there really is no other choice in the twisted halls of Pennsylvania politics.

However, let’s be honest about it. This is some classist, racist bullshit.

NOTE: This article also was published in full on Diane Ravitch’s blog, Commondreams.org, and the Badass Teachers Association Blog.

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